Thomas Lux

Talking to students at the Dodge Festival in 2000, THOMAS LUX described his life as a poet as “like any other job. You pack your lunch pail and you go to work.” This very down-to-earth approach reveals something essential about Lux: he understands that the work itself is too challenging, and too important, to be romanticized. This does not mean the creative act is lacking mystery for him. No one knows where inspiration comes from, but for Lux, to therefore imagine all artists have to do is wait passively for it to arrive is to trivialize the real work of art. His collections of poetry include God Particles: Poems (2008); The Cradle Place (2004); The Street of Clocks (2001); New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995 (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems, 1970-1975 (1996); and Split Horizon (1994), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.